The immediate embrace of anything analogue-warped by certain corners of the Internet shouldn't detract from Forever, as it's quite an engaging listen when the right (nocturnal) mood strikes.

The record’s oversized persona feels strange because these sounds don’t owe that much to the twang or crate-digging excavations that built Romweber’s reputation.

Ellington and Bean’s voices braid pleasant timbres that sound quite right sailing over the band’s strum and shuffle, but they’re curiously lacking in the chemistry that separates necessary from nice.

All of the songs here are strong enough to be bolstered (rather than swamped) by their rococo touches and period piece flourishes.

It's striking how well the gypsy sound fits with older material, but even so, the best song on Alegrias was written specifically for the album.

That such disparate musicians with such massive amounts of tape from the field could put something together this tastefully gives hope that whatever and wherever Albarn decides to operate next, he conducts proceedings in the same considered fashion as he has here.

No one’s going to herald Waiting For Something To Happen as a great leap forward, but there’s a subtle refinement in approach happening for the attentive of ear.

It's the first record that, overall, feels serious.

I Am All Your Own could be mistaken for a depressing and soul-searching breakup record if it weren’t so beautifully calm and thematically ambivalent.

Acoustic guitar, electric often played clean, and politely-tapped drums have never married pop beauty and frightening moodiness like they do when Supreme Dicks hit a stride.

Maybe the problem with The Politics of Envy is that these tracks just sounded too good playing back on shiny studio monitors to a roomful of old friends. If he's struggling to say something about the wider world, maybe Stewart should consider a retreat into his own eccentric interior.

Its greatest strengths are more memorable: the songwriting is strong, even if the album is a little top heavy, and it’s a lot of fun to watch Aaron Funk go way out on a limb without a safety net in sight.

He sings in a voice that makes everything sound like an indecent proposal (and honestly, some of it is). A younger, less whispery Leonard Cohen with a slightly wider range might be the best point of reference.

While a lot of their peers have attempted (unsuccessfully, mostly) to beat down the doors of California's psychedelic myth, Sic Alps have taken their time and found their own way there; in doing so they've created one of the best records of the year.

Personally, the album works for me because it's kind of a gloss on intersecting listening practices that also has a distinct identity; the concentration of techno, the emotional lift of pop, the cratering impact of dubstep, and CHLLNGR himself are all there. It follows that the highs are toned down a bit for all those to fit comfortably. But then, the album feels so complete in itself, you don't really notice.

Jónsi plays with orchestral beauty and flirts with pop, and ends up somewhere in between, fascinating and inscrutable.

Even more striking is the way she folds all this talent into her songs, keeping all the bits distinct while shaping them into a complicated, intricate whole that breathes like a living creature. Nicely done.

Lamping has some catchy songs and some interesting lyrics, but feels too inconsequential, too easily sloughed off.

Unfortunately, the greatest asset to Splazsh also feels like its greatest Achilles heel. The territory this album spans is substantial, but almost impossible to get into without focused, repeated listening.

Perhaps in the end it’s best to just say that The Besnard Lakes sound like themselves; they’ve certainly found a way to refine their own sound, and the jarring beauty that can be heard in A Coliseum Complex Museum is a prime example of it.

The result is an album that is as notable on its own as it is in the historical chillwave narrative.

A pretty percolating electro-pop record that embraces sweetness and strangeness in equal measure.

An album like Alien in a Garbage Dump is interesting for its first spin, when the listener has the resources to make something of it. Past that, you’ll need to make an almost ritual commitment to teasing out the clashes that push the music forward.

You may stumble upon an experiment or a minute-long fragment here and there, but the deck is stacked with memorable songcraft and an attitude that understands silliness without succumbing to sketch-comic dead ends.

No matter the tempo or timbre, this album always feels like an act of love between SeiTang and his vintage equipment.

While there’s no disputing the attractiveness of its well-polished recording... it’s patchy and... in places, disturbingly adult-contemporary.

The end result is the 11 songs on Unlearn, which I'll save you the frustration of calling "eclectic" and opt for the even more euphemistic "well-informed."

The ride is fun enough, better than average for the masses, but for this band it’s an off-day: once it’s over, you don’t even think to wonder why it was fun.